Open letter to Ministers of Transport and Home Affairs

Critical shortage of licensing forms will arrest the economy
 
Dear Ministers Chikunga and Motsoaledi,
 
I will get straight to the point. The critical shortage of the ‘face value forms,’ supplied by the national Government Printing Works and used for issuing motor vehicle and driving licences, will have a disastrous impact on our people and the economy.
 
If we run out of these forms, and cannot supply our municipalities, there will be no motor vehicle licence discs; no vehicle registration certificates; no temporary driving licences for those beset by an emergency; and applicants who pass the test will not get their learners’ licences. The impact on the quality of life of our citizens and our commitment to a lawful society will be significant.
 
Government Printing Works staff have recently attempted to placate us by dispatching a few boxes “just to keep [us] going for a week,” with the assurance that they are “working on a plan to clear all backorders.”
 
But the problem is much more significant than needing a few boxes and this issue is a long-running one. The Western Cape currently has a backlog of 750 boxes of forms that have not been supplied, from orders placed on 7 July 2023 and 21 September 2023. Before this, we have had to close orders in our system because they had not been fulfilled.
 
The effect of this stationery shortage is that we’ve had to drastically reduce the number of forms supplied to our various municipalities. The City of Cape Town, with the highest demand, is now alarmingly close to the end of its stocks. We have raised this issue repeatedly but are not getting a satisfactory response or a sense that there is an urgency to deal with a matter that is not complicated and can be resolved.
 
We have and will continue to do our best to manage this situation, but if national government – under the auspices of your departments – do not fulfil our orders urgently, we will run out of these forms completely.
 
We cannot let problems with stationery leave our citizens stationary.
 
Yours sincerely,
 
Ricardo Mackenzie
Provincial Minister of Mobility in the Western Cape